REST: A java package for crafting realistic cosmic dust particles

TL;DR

REST is a Java package that generates realistic cosmic dust particle models with various shapes, surface roughness, and porosity to aid in interpreting space observation data.

Contribution

It introduces a versatile Java tool for creating detailed cosmic dust models with diverse morphologies and surface features, enhancing simulation accuracy.

Findings

Generated realistic dust particle structures with varied morphologies.

Studied light scattering properties to validate models.

Applicable to different space dust research scenarios.

Abstract

The overall understanding of cosmic dust particles is mainly inferred from the different Earth-based measurements of interplanetary dust particles and space missions such as Giotto, Stardust and Rosetta. The results from these measurements indicate the presence of a wide variety of morphologically significant dust particles. To interpret the light scattering and thermal emission observations arising due to dust in different regions of space, it is necessary to generate computer modelled realistic dust structures of various shape, size, porosity, bulk density, aspect ratio and material inhomogenity. The present work introduces a java package called Rough Ellipsoid Structure Tool (REST), which is a collection of multiple algorithms, that aims to craft realistic rough surface cosmic dust particles from spheres, super-ellipsoids and fractal aggregates depending on the measured bulk-density and porosity. Initially, spheres having $N_d$ dipoles or lattice points are crafted by selecting random material and space seed cells to generate strongly damaged structure, rough surface and poked structure. Similarly, REST generates rough surface super-ellipsoids and poked structure super-ellipsoids from initial super-ellipsoid structures. REST also generates rough fractal aggregates which are fractal aggregates having rough surface irregular grains. REST has been applied to create agglomerated debris, agglomerated debris super-ellipsoids and mixed morphology particles. Finally, the light scattering properties of the respective applied structures are studied to ensure their applicability. REST is a flexible structure tool, which shall be useful to generate various types of dust structures that can be applied to study the physical properties of dust in different regions of space.